


Yellow Incisors and Sock Blindfolds

by cyoctrix



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 13:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19906771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyoctrix/pseuds/cyoctrix
Summary: Double potions is the worst, but a chance meeting in an otherwise abandoned corridor does its level best to distract from a second year Harry Potter's existential dread.





	Yellow Incisors and Sock Blindfolds

**Author's Note:**

> Something I had in my head. <3 Enjoy. It doesn't have much aim, but I hope the charm makes up for it.

Double potions, as usual, has wrung Harry Potter dry of whatever joy he'd managed to accrue since… well, the last time he'd had double potions. Usually, it wouldn't be a strange occurrence for he and Ron to kick back afterwards during their free period in the common room with a chessboard between the pair of them. 

If Harry's going to get beat down, better it be something he's agreed to beforehand. Ron cheerfully said this once after having put Harry in checkmate for the fourth time in a row in one sitting and it crosses Harry's mind now as he meanders down the corridor with no real aim to his heavy tread except maybe some solitude. 

He doesn't feel like getting beat down right now at all, consensual or otherwise. He's not so paranoid as to keep his hand in his pocket to grasp at his concealed wand or anything, but he's all too aware of it bumping against his leg as he walks. Once, Harry might have likened 'security' to the advanced darkness of a threadbare blanket thrown over his head in a cupboard at midnight, 'if they can't see me I can't see them' and all that rot, but now it's this.

"Hellloooo? Hello. Hi. Good morning. Heeelllo." A female voice, airy and light, echoes up ahead - or perhaps behind, Hogwarts is weird - and Harry stops in his tracks to better listen. "Haaaaeeeeelllllo. Hello. H-- oh! I didn't see you there." 

When Harry catches sight of the source of all that racket, he's shocked to see a girl - first year, must be, she's tiny - with a blindfold about her face, hair so blonde as to be almost white. For a very odd moment, he thinks it might be Malfoy after a spell gone wrong, but he discards the thought almost immediately after it crosses his mind. She's too short. 

She hadn't bumped into Harry when she stopped her repeated greetings, but stopped in the very center of the corridor anyway. She hadn't bumped into anything else, either, as there is nothing like an obstacle in her way whatsoever… not that she would know, he considers, as she's wearing a really long sock as a makeshift blindfold. He tilts his head one way, and then the other. Maybe if he looks at the scene from a different angle, it'll start to make sense.  


"Are you lost?" Harry asks, hesitant to… interrupt. Really, he probably could have just snuck on by and continued onward with his own thoughts, but this is almost better. He hasn't thought about Snape's yellowed left incisor in about two minutes now. No, scratch that, zero minutes. Eugh.

"Are you lost?" She parrots, and another odd moment occurs where Harry wonders if corridors can be charmed to echo long after natural echoes have stopped. He's almost impressed; her impression was very accurate. Mostly, though, he's annoyed. 

"Who were you saying hello to? There's no one here. And… you know, you must be sort of cold." Harry lifts a hand to scratch at the nape of his neck, having now noticed that the sock around her eyes must actually have come from her feet. One of them is bare, and there are no shoes anywhere he can see. It's too late in the year for that sort of thing, he reckons - if any time of the year is good for walking half-barefoot around a drafty castle in Scotland, anyway.

"You said I wasn't saying hello to anyone, but here you are," the girl says a trifle more triumphantly than Harry personally thinks is warranted. "If someone says hello in a corridor on her own but there's no one around to hear her, is she really saying hello?"

There's a beat of pause as Harry considers this. 

"She makes an impact," he replies with a wry twist of his mouth, having recalled something or other about trees. A laugh like ringing bells emerges from the girl a tinkling chortle more than a raucous clanging like what comes from the clocktower. Harry considers, briefly, that if anyone laughed like the clocktower bells he'd never tell a joke again for fear of their response.

"Oh! I get it. She makes an impact! In fact! Aha!" Etcetera etcetera, the girl goes along this vein for a minute without further input from Harry. He's flummoxed, really; it didn't really make sense to respond like that to her, in retrospect, as other than the reference to a tree falling in a forest, her question was formatted with different variables to account for. He doesn't think about it in words like this, probably, but it crosses his mind in some form.

Harry can't help the warmth he feels at her unseeing regard either way. This girl doesn't know his name and she's *still* laughing at his joke, in-retrospect-bad as it was. He'd probably feel worse about feeling so good about it if it weren't so needed after having to stare at that incis-- bloody hell, that's zero minutes again.

"Anyway." Harry clears his throat, thinking it time to cut her off before she starts to choke. "Why are you blindfolded?"

The girl's laughter cuts off abruptly. She considers Harry for a moment, or she tries to - she ends up looking a few degrees to his left by mistake, but he knows what she's going for and inwardly acknowledges that. "Did you know muggles can't see when they lose their eyes? If I were a muggle and I could lose my eyes permanently one day, I think I should like to know what it's like to not be able to see."

Another pause ensues, this one significantly more awkward. Well, it's awkward for Harry, anyway; this girl has endless patience, her expectant smile small and genuine for all it seems misplaced here.

"You're practicing to be a muggle who has lost their eyes?" Harry repeats slowly for both emphasis purposes and to try to do that tactic where if you say something back to someone else in a certain tone they'll come to their senses and not believe it anymore. Lazy, sure, but known to be effective… at least with his erstwhile cousin… but only then when Dudley can't immediately resort to fists.

He's not surprised when he it doesn't work. Luna chirps her ready agreement. "I'm looking to broaden my mind." Harry thinks her mind is plenty broad enough, but doesn't say so. Also, that refrain sounds familiar and brings to mind-- oh, for bloody chrissakes. Zero minutes.

"I should, er, go," Harry says.

"Okay," the girl replies. She marches on, greeting the air again when she gets about ten paces from Harry's unmoved figure. When he can finally shake himself to walk on, he does so with a heart lighter but a mind heavier. Such is the way of Hogwarts, he thinks. He supposes he'll get used to the ghosts that roam the corridors the longer he schools here.


End file.
